It's all in the diet

Kate has had a problem with commercial dog foods for a while now.

I fed her premium food from the beginning (ProPlan dry puppy food, then Iams Turkey and Rice dry food).

About five or six years ago, my vet in Shekomeko said I should change Kate to a senior food.

Worst. Decision. Ever.

The adult food I had Kate on was primarily what the name said: turkey and rice. There was very little cornmeal or corn product in it.

Not so with Iams senior food. The first ingredient was cornmeal, which was something Kate did not eat a lot of. There was a scant amount in one dog biscuit recipe I would make, but that was about it.

She broke out with bumps all over her body. And believe me, bumps was not the worst part of it.

The "end" result, if you catch my drift, was either trips outside twice an hour (I'm not kidding) or a real mess to clean up (I'm really not kidding).

I took Kate to the vet, who determined it was a food allergy and put her on a prescription food which was just potato and venison.

Flash Forward (which isn't a bad show, BTW) to a few months ago, when my new vet in Pleasant Valley told me they were no longer carrying the brand of potato and venison Kate had been on. So we switched to another (more expensive) prescription brand.

Not halfway through the second bag of the new brand, Kate developed diarrhea. At that point I went into the "white diet" mode — poached chicken, rice and fat-free cottage cheese. There was also a prescription powder — Tylan — a pinch of which is sprinkled on the food to help quell the runs.

Within days, Kate would be fine. So usually after a week of her system being OK, I would start reintroducing the dry food — slowly. It would go fine until I was up to 1/2 cup of dry, then, bam, the runs would start again.

Back to the white diet. Then reintroducing the dry. Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat.

I even decided to dump the prescription and go back to a natural/organic food like Blue Buffalo. I made sure there was no corn in it, but unfortunately the results were eventually the same.

One thing I noticed while Kate was purely on the white diet was 1) how much she seemed to enjoy it and 2) how well she did on it.

I had nothing to lose — except my throw rugs — so I decided to see what would happen if I kept her on the homemade diet. I added boiled hamburger to the mix, along with pasta such as ditalini or small elbows and mashed sweet potatoes.

Kate loved it, and frankly, it seemed to love her. She was even going to the bathroom less, which at first, freaked me out, because we are a nation that loves regularity and schedules. Once I figured out that she would go when she needed to go, I felt much better and didn't worry. As long as I was still providing her the opportunities to do so. (You have to wonder what goes into the dry concoctions that make the animal produce such quantities of waste.)

Here's a video of Kate enjoying a homemade meal. I add a couple of tablespoons of a canned, organic dog food to the food.



Since that video was made, I've been putting cooked green beans in her meal. And she's really scarfed them up. Oddly though, I offered her one as a snack and she spit it out.

As a precaution I give her a multiple vitamin, along with her glucosamine tablet. And I noticed her hair was getting a bit dry looking, but a touch of olive oil seemed to fix that.

It's a work in progress, one that seems to be doing the trick.

Is it more expensive than the dry food? The last bag of prescription, most of which is still sitting in my cupboard, was $65 for a month.

I think what I'm doing — buying hamburger and chicken on sale — is probably a little less than that.

And the relief factor? Priceless.